"To break your spirit," was the amused reply.
"Then your marriage has fulfilled its purpose," she said wearily. "My spirit is broken. Now I can go home."
That night she wrote to Hannah. The letter is faded, and stained with three women's tears, wife's, mother's, daughter's. "Dearest Mother," she wrote, "I am ill and weary. Another little child is coming, but I may not live for it to be born. I can leave him without failing in my wife's duty now, for the end is very near. I am coming home to die. Your loving broken-hearted Daughter."
Next day she packed for home.
"Deserting me, are you? Fine Jezebel ways! A good Christian wifely thing to do, I'm sure. I thought we were proud of doing our duty."
His sneers did not move her now. She was going home to die.
Northgate House was a dismal place to return to. It was a wet cheerless winter. Hannah was tired and heart-sore. Christian was dying. Jael was evil-tempered, scolding harshly: her comfort to her mother and daughter was still "I told you so." Rachel went straight to bed. In a few days Christian died, a sickly pitiful boy of twenty. "It is the Lord's will," said his mother. Hannah had everything to do, for Simeon Greeber would not let Martha come over from Torribridge, and Jael took to her bed with a convenient fit of the ague. Faith in the eternal love of God was Hannah's only stay. Always, ever, "It was the Lord's will." This sufficed her, though the times were bitter. The day after Christian's funeral was wet and wintry: March the Second 1848. Rachel was twenty-four. Three years ago she had been a happy healthy girl. Now she was a dying broken woman. The morning of that day she gave birth to a daughter. Then she was very weak. Her eyes closed, yet she seemed to see something.
"What do you see, Rachel, my dear?" asked her mother.
The spirit was already half away, looking through the golden gates of Heaven.
"There is a little angel born. I see her in God's cradle. My little angel, God's little angel. I shall be with her always—though far away. I see ... the King in His beauty ... I behold the land ... that is very far off."